After a ragged start in this mornings race, Tan and Aitken “played nice”, which allowed the field to get through first lap incident free.

The two cars that suffered the most damage during the first lap incident in Race #2 were the No. 5 of Garett Grist and the No. 2 of Daniel Burkett. The Juncos Racing crew worked their tails off and got the car of Grist (who hit the wall) fixed in time for the race. Unfortunately the car of Burkett (who left the racing surface to avoid the incident) suffered damage beyond what the Cape Motorsports with /WTR crew could fix before the green flag. They should be back in time for the next round at Barber Motorsports Park

When the green flag fell, Tan, the pole sitter and Aitken drag raced down the front stretch and went side-by-side for the first four turns before Aitken pulled ahead.

The order at the end of the fist lap was: Aitken, Tan, Garett Grist, Florian Latorre, and Dalton Kellett.

The second lap saw Nicholas Latifi and Jose Gutierrez go side-by-side through Turn 10, 11 and 12 before the Latifi came out ahead.

Tan was right under the gearbox of Aitken down the backstretch on lap 4, and showed himself to the outside, but tucked right back in behind Aitken. That was closest he would get and for most of the race the gap remained between 0.4 and 0.9 seconds.

By the sixth lap, the two leaders had pulled almost a seven second gap over third place runner Grist, who was the engine on a nine car train of flame spitting Mazda rotary powered cars.

Tan continued to dog Aitken and narrowed the gap back to 0.2 seconds on lap 15, but couldn’t make a move for the lead.

Series interloper (he’s signed to race in the World Series By Renault 3.5 championship) Latifi was able to get by Canadian Garret Grist on the second last lap to score the final spot on the podium.

Paralyzed racer Michael Johnson was able to make two nice passes late in the race to score an impressive top 10.

Rank

Car No.

Driver

Laps Completed

Quickest Lap

1

82

Jack Aitken

20

1:34.687

2

22

Weiron Tan

20

1:34.380

3

18

Nicolas Latifi

20

1:34.975

4

5

Garett Grist

20

1:34.868

5

7

Jose Gutierrez

20

1:36.666

6

23

Will Owen

20

1:36.794

7

28

Dalton Kellett

20

1:37.444

8

10

Florian Latorre

20

1:38.428

9

6

Timothe Buret

20

1:37.352

10

54

Michael Johnson

20

1:36.220

11

14

Alessandro Latif

20

1:36.100

12

19

Raoul Owens

20

1:36.781

13

13

Bobby Eberle

20

1:36.905

14

33

Carlos Conde

19

1:43.246

A final post is upcoming with some final thoughts about the first half of Cooper Tires Winterfest.